The
evangelization of New Spain, as Mexico was once called, did not come easy for the first
missionaries. They encountered, among the Aztecs at least, a religion of human sacrifice,
and among other peoples a resistance that went as far as the martyrdom of Christian
converts. It took the appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary to a humble native American to
turn the tide. What followed was the conversion of 8 million native Americans to the
Catholic faith in only 7 years, a number equivalent to 3000 a day. Thus God unleashed
through Mary a New Pentecost that imitated the original one, for "three thousand were
converted that day" (Acts 2:41).